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Powering Communities Through a Surprising Source of Renewable Energy: Human Waste
Around the world, a staggering 2.5 billion people lack access to decent toilets. That leads to far too many people getting sick from preventable diseases. Anne Healy and Erin Crossett of Development Innovation Ventures say the good news is that some enterprising companies are experimenting with ways to make human waste disposal profitable in the developing world.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Health Care, WASH
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Making a Case for the Business Case: New Ways to Provide Sustainable Financial Services to Low-Income Communities
The high numbers of people who participate in informal savings groups is appealing to financial service providers – there are hundreds of thousands of active groups whose self-selected members save weekly for a year, and share their accumulated savings – but it's not easy to tap into this market commercially. BFA recommends using a business case modeler to help acquire low-income people as customers in a sustainable way.
- Categories
- Finance
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From Smart Meters to ‘Water ATMs’: Innovative Solutions to Bring Water Services to Rural Africa
An estimated 663 million people lack access to clean and safe drinking water in the world today. Innovations such as smart metering services are being tested to enhance access to water. However, these solutions have not been widely adopted across Africa, except at some water vending points. George Muruka at MicroSave explores how these innovations can be scaled up to the household level.
- Categories
- Technology, WASH
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Fixing Financial Inclusion’s Gender Gap: Fast-Growing ‘Community of Practice’ Seeks Solutions
One billion women living in the poorest 40 percent of developing-country households remain outside the formal financial system. A persistent gender gap in developing countries in account ownership rates suggests that efforts at financial inclusion are not reaching women. In an effort to change that, CGAP recently launched the Women’s Financial Inclusion Community of Practice to bring together practitioners, funders and policymakers.
- Categories
- Finance
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Social Entrepreneurs, Ignore the Mantra of Focus at Your Own Peril
When SunFarmer went through Y Combinator in 2015, its founders heard a lot of startup wisdom, including the mantra of focus. But according to co-founder Andy Moon, the Nepal-based social enterprise ignored this advice –
then struggled to sell multiple products to multiple customer segments simultaneously. Moon discusses what went wrong, and how his firm is regrouping.- Categories
- Energy, Social Enterprise
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Why Startup Accelerators Won’t Create the Global Climate Technology Revolution
Accelerators may be a great way to launch the next Pokémon Go app or even Airbnb, but they're not as suited for climate startups in low- and middle-income countries. Jean-Louis Racine, leader of the infoDev Climate Technology Program at the World Bank Group, explores several reasons why accelerators are "at best an incomplete tool for building climate tech sectors."
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Five Key Building Blocks for Sustainable, Inclusive Recycling Systems
For the past year, a working group formed by the MIT Practical Impact Alliance (an MIT D-Lab program) has been exploring strategies for developing effective inclusive recycling systems in India, Africa and Latin America. The result is the publication of a guide for practitioners that includes five key steps for developing inclusive systems, nine case studies and a tool for promoting recycling systems that benefit all stakeholders.
- Categories
- Environment, Social Enterprise, WASH
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Solar & Renewable Energy Pioneer Kingo Announces $8.0 Million Series B Financing Round
Kingo, through its innovative prepaid solar energy service, turns lives ON for off-grid households at the bottom of the economic pyramid (BoP).
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing
- Region
- Latin America
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